As I turned the corner of the hallway, I found myself face to face with six Metans, all of whom stood with their backs to a door that blocked the rest of the hallway.

The Werecat that had fled from my earlier attack was there, along with two Ursals, two Vampires, and a normal-looking woman.

“Don’t be an idiot,” one of the Ursals said, to me, as I approached them. His deep voice rumbled powerfully through the hallways.

“The exit is the other way,” the Werecat said, his voice carrying a menacing hiss as he spoke.

I ignored them. I raised my left hand, which was clutching the Fire-attuned Compressed Mana Crystal, poured a hundred points into Physical Defense, and I let a wide arc of fire loose in the hallway.

It burned. I could feel the waves of heat on me, as well, but that wasn’t the source of the most pain.

I could feel every inch of my body complaining, my bones, my muscles, and my organs, all straining to contain and redirect the small fraction of fire-attuned mana that was essentially recoiling into my body.

If I had a Fire affinity, this probably wouldn’t hurt this much. But my body was rejecting the fire-attuned mana on a fundamental level, and I could feel my whole body complaining.

Surveying the rest of the corridor, it looked like using the compressed Mana Crystal to kill these guards was overkill.

The downside of the wide swaths of fire was that their loot was also singed, burned, and some of it was destroyed.

Rather than pick up red-hot metal, I focused on the door that the six guards had been defending.

Unlike almost every other room in this building, this door, and the wall surrounding it, had an active Mana Shield. Apparently, it was powered by a separate system than the rest of the building.

Even after getting hit by my fire-attuned Mana Cannon, the wall held.

I raised my left hand, which was still slightly trembling, and fired my Void Attuned Compressed Mana Crystal directly at the door’s lock.

At the same time, I increased my own Strength and rammed my sword against the door.

I felt my spider leg snap in half, but the door also gave way, and I stepped inside the room that the six Metans had been defending.

The room was full of shelves. There were weapons, more high-end laboratory equipment, food supplies, dozens of other miscellaneous and valuable things, but, most importantly for me, shelves and shelves dedicated for mana storage.

I ignored the shelves that held Mana Beads, and I walked passed the Mana Shards.

Then, I took in the collection of Mana Crystals that lined the next shelf. There were about forty of them. Most of them were unattuned, and many of them were not Compressed, meaning they were the size of a watermelon.

But that still left me with ten attuned Mana Crystals. Each Mana Crystal was potentially able to kill the strongest of the guards in the building—the guards that were level 150 or higher.

After collecting the Mana Crystals, I moved on to the Mana Shards, filling my various Interdimensional Pouches with Mana Shards as well.

I was only half-way done collecting the Mana Shards when I noticed a group of a dozen red dots reach the same floor I was on, led by a black dot, which, presumably, meant someone higher than level 100.

I paused collecting my loot, and I stood to the side of the open door to the treasury, just out of sight of the incoming guards.

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Some part of me almost felt bad, for what I was about to do.

These Metans were all trapped in a narrow corridor. Once they were just fifteen yards away, I stepped into view, raised my left hand, and released another blast of fire-attuned mana, making sure I had plenty of points in Physical Defense and Luck.

They were all caught off-guard.

Rather than a continuous flame-thrower that I had used last time, this time, I condensed all the mana into a single, incredibly powerful beam that took up most of the width of the corridor.

I heard a sharp, familiar crack, and I realized that I had just broken someone’s Personal Mana Shield.

I dropped the now-useless Mana Crystal to the ground. Ignoring the pain, I immediately released a second blast—this time, a narrow beam of Void Energy traveling directly to the only man still standing.

I walked through the hallway gingerly, struggling to breath in the intense, lingering heat, and looted the corpses.

The most noteable loot, of course, came from the man who led the charge—a level 105 swordsman.

He dropped a C-rank sword and C-rank boots, which I immediately claimed as my own, and a D-rank Interdimensional Pouch, which held a number of unattuned Mana shards, as well as Health Potions.

I finished looting the rest of the Mana Shards, and then I followed the dotted line Samantha provided me, finally heading towards the Information Crystal—my true objective.

I could tell on my mini-map that the guards in the building knew where I was. There were two stairwells that could take me up to the floor that held the prize, and they were both chalk-full of soldiers. With all the sharp corners of a stairwell, it would be incredibly difficult to utilize the Mana Fragments and Mana Crystals effectively. Melee fighting would be even more dangerous, since most of these guards had more Stat Points than I did.

Fortunately, though, I had a different strategy in mind.

I moved through various corridors and side-rooms until I was directly below the room with the Information Crystal, and then I fired a Void Attuned Compressed Mana Crystal directly up, forming a hole about a yard in diameter, through ceiling after ceiling, until I could finally see a blue sky above me. This left me with just seven Mana Crystals.

Then I added my floating points to Strength, and I leapt. I jumped directly through the ceiling above me, and in my descent, I planted my legs on the more stable parts of the floor, using my newfound footing to jump again, directly to the next floor.

I could hear shouting above me, and someone launched a fireball down towards me.

Instead of slowing down, I let the fireball land on the E-rank Personal Shield I had looted, and I continued my ascent.

I stopped a floor below the floor that held the Information Crystal. Thanks to Samantha’s Mini-map, I knew in advance that the there were a dozen red dots, and one black dot, defending the Information Crystal.

So rather than jump through the hole as they were expecting, I paused at the level below them.

“He’s under us!”

“I have eyes on him!”

I could hear them calling above me, but I ignored them, for the most part, calmly loading my next Mana Crystal.

This was another Void Attuned Mana Crystal.

I fired it at a slight angle, directly where I knew the black dot was standing.

I ignored the painful feedback as best as I could, jumping up through the hole I had just made in the floor.

I split all my mana between Strength, Luck, and Agility, directly targeting the woman who I knew was the highest level of all of them, dropping the emptied Mana Crystal.

To my disappointment, my Void Attuned Mana Crystal hadn’t even scratched the woman, and she still had a Personal Mana Shield around her.

The moment I appeared, the woman—a Werecat magician—acted.

Hundreds of large, metal needles flew towards me from a dozen different directions.

They flew towards me in the sense that they moved in the air—not flew quickly.

In fact, these several hundred needles formed a sphere around me, completely blocking off any area of attack before I could even move.

There were enough of them that they formed a literal wall, impossible to dodge completely.

I readied an Air Attuned Compressed Mana Crystal next, firing directly at the woman—driving hundreds of needles towards her in the process.

I watched, feeling a sense of poetic justice, as dozens of needles that had been pointed at me stabbed into the woman’s own shield, until I heard the telltale crack.

I followed the needles with my new, C-rank sword, beheading the woman with a single swipe.

This whole time, the other guards were trying to launch attacks at me, but Samantha made sure I was moving in an unpredictable zig-zag. On top of this, there was the area of effect wall of air that was expelling out of my hand, pushing the guards and their attacks away, buying me time to deal with just the woman.

Once the woman was dealt with, the floating needles dropped to the ground, and the rest of the battle in the room was a one-sided massacre.

Now that I was fully going all-out, I was able to keep up with the guards, even though many of them were level 80 or higher.

They each had their skills, spells, and techniques, but Samantha was able to predict their movements easily, allowing me to one-shot the weaker ones with my Mana Shards, and target the stronger opponents with my C-rank blade.

It wasn’t long before I was alone in a room full of corpses, and I was finally able to see what this Information Crystal was all about.